Randolph P. (Randy) Johnston

4 Cool iPhone Camera Tricks that You Should Try

An iPhone is a very powerful device that can do all sorts of things, if you know how to use it. Amongst all sorts of effective actions you can do, one of the areas where this device excels is capturing amazing images. However, this is also not that that simple, particularly if you don’t know what you are doing when it comes to photography.

Of course, you cannot take the kind of amazing professional pictures with an iPhone that you can with a pro camera, but you can come close enough if you learn how to do a couple of things. If you want to be a professional photographer and make this your career choice, then you will have to get a suitable camera.

Still, even the pros hire professional photo editing services to improve their photos. However, if you want to make decent photos with your iPhone, here are four tricks you should learn.

1. Manually adjust exposure

In order to adjust the light in the photos you take with your iPhone, you can just use the exposure feature. This option doesn’t only remove light, but you can also use it to add more of it, if needed. When you press the subject in your photo, a tiny sun icon will pop up next to the central box.

You can drag the sun on this vertical line to either reduce exposure or increase it. This can be very useful when you are trying to take photos in places where there is little light. Make this your constant habit and after some time you will find great uses for it and make your photos look better.

2. Don’t use flash all the time

There are certain situations when you can use your iPhone’s flash. For example, if you want to take a portrait of someone while the sun is behind them, it’s a good idea to use flash, because it will remove all of the shadows on that person's face and you will be able to actually capture them the way they are.

However, in most cases using flash will only make the people you are taking photos of look washed out. Additionally, flash is completely useless when you are trying to take a photo through glass.

3. Take shots using the physical button

Did you know that you can take photos with the volume buttons located on your iPhone headphones? Well, you can and they can be quite handy. If you need to hold your phone at a strange angle, tapping might be difficult and you might even struggle to capture a shot because you will move your phone every time you tap it.

Professional photographers use SLRs to reduce their camera shake, so why shouldn’t you do this as well? With this method you will make sure that each of your shots are stable without any movement.

4. Create motion blur with HDR

One of the best and quickest ways of improving your photos is to take some time and experiment with your iPhone using its HDR feature. This is a mode you can turn off and on with a single tap on the top of your app.

HDR is short for “high dynamic range”, a mode which can artificially enhance the lightest and darkest areas of a photo. It is very useful for preventing those areas from becoming too black and disappearing, and it also makes sure that they don’t get overexposed.

Conclusion

These are useful, small tricks that will make your photos significantly better. Try out the limits of these techniques and you will be able to find that sweet spot. In the end, you can add an iPhone camera filter to further enhance your images.